acdii

I would laugh, but I had two smashes today, so I feel your pain.

The elevator servo on my Something Extra failed in the full up position, thankfully at low rates. I pulled into a loop and it kept looping when I released the stick, then I realized I had no pitch control at all, so I chopped throttle and thought through everything to figure out how best to save it when it crashes, and was able to slowly get it lower and lower and closer to me, all the while it is doing loops, then I finally cut the engine off and then harriered it down to the ground. Well sort of since I had no power and if I did, no way to control speed, and finally got it down right in front of me and managed to save it with minimal damage, only tore the gear out, and broke one wheel pant. Easy fix, would have done it if I had some 30 minute epoxy with me, I had a spare servo.

I maidened my Ultimate 10 Dash 300 with a gemini 120 twin on it, and it flew nicely, though it needs the throttle linkage redone, I had very little throttle control, idle all the way to half stick, then I had throttle, but not much mid range, but was able to fly it around and made a decent landing.

My third plane up was my P-47 thunderbolt. It flew beautiful, but the midrange in the engine was spotty and a few times I thought it quit, only to hear to spool up again. I had it lined up for a decent landing approach, but the landing gear did not look right to me, so sped up and flew by to verify they were all the way down, they were, the bombs on the wings made it look like they were at an angle, optical illusion. Second approach looked OK, but not being used to the planes size it was not where I thought it was, it was further out and where I thought it had cleared the building, it was right in line with it and I smacked the right wing on the roof and sent it to the ground. I had a few things line up for a perfect screw up, sweat in my left eye, making it tear, obstacles to the right of the plane, a large building to the left of it, and a plane whose size I am not used to. The wind was SW so the only approach I could make is between this building and some trees, and there is this damned semi trailer at the end of the field with tools on it, and that is the obstacle that leads up to having problems landing as I am paranoid of it.

So I now have only 3 flyable planes, the 4*120 which I rarely fly, I always seem to have some issue with it, my Cub, which guzzles fuel, and my P-51, which also guzzles fuel and I am not fully comfortable flying it. Funny thing is I was very comfortable flying the P-47, I just misjudged the distance.